ATTENDANCE AT SCHOOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19511, 15 December 1926, Page 14

ATTENDANCE AT SCHOOL.

BOUNDARIES NOT OBSERVED. POSITION AT WHANGAREI. [BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.] WHANGAREI. Tuesday. The Whangarei School Committee has requested the Minister of Education to sanction the remodelling of. the school to accommodate the increasing attendance. When the junior high school was opened the Whangarei school dropped in grading, but the .attendance was recovered during tha year and, therefore, the committee repeated the request for seven additional rooms to be provided in the remodelling scheme instead of six. The. Horahora School Committee metthe Minister and submitted thai while in that school some of the rooms were practically unoccupied, children from the district were attending the Whangarei school. The Minister told " the Horahora committee that he thoroughly in sympathy: in regard to the points raised. A regulation covering the question of attendance , was actually in vogue and had been for two years. The question was, therefore, that of enforcement of the regulation. He was strongly opposed to children leaving schools in their districts and attending outside schools, particularly if there was adequate accommodation for them in their own district school, as in the case of Horahora. It appealed to him directly asi Minister of Education from the economic point of view, for he certainly could not sanction additions to an overcrowded school when a school in an adjoining district had a large empty classroom available for legitimate relief of congestion at the other school. He could not take action individually in seeing that the regulation was enforced.- That was a function' belonging to-the governing'board of education, but he was prepared to go into the matter with the Auckland Education Board and to personally recommend that authority to bring the regulation into force. He had no doubt that the board "Would recognise the reasonableness arid equity of the position.